Megyn Kelly Is No Hero Just Because She Challenged Donald Trump

One highly visible night of challenging Republicans during Fox’s primary debate does not mean we should forget Megyn Kelly’s long history of promoting Fox News bias, anti-women rhetoric, race baiting and Donald Trump, too.

I’ve written before about how Megyn Kelly adeptlystages calculated-to-go-viral YouTube moments in which she appears to stray from Fox News orthodoxy – even as she continues to advance Fox News talking points and more or less reaffirms them. There’s no reason to think that Kelly’s viral Republican debate moments were anything other than more of the same.

More importantly, Kelly has hardly been a strong supporter of women’s rights. Sure she had some splashy moments defending working mothers and women's sex lives. But she seems torelish discussing cases in which men are wrongly accused of sexual abuse. I must have blinked and missed her showing the same zeal for covering the very real problem of actual sexual abuse. She also smeared Sandra Fluke’s call for contraception coverage in health insurance as a sense of “entitlement” – while allowing a guest to slut shame Fluke.

Also, remember when Kelly made a crack about Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s looks?

Besides all that, Kelly is one of Fox News’ most reliable race baiters. As I wrote in a previous post:

I’ll take Kelly’s word for it that she lacks political ideology. But while she personally may not root for anyone, her willingness to push Fox propaganda couldn’t be more evident. Show me a segment where Kelly yelled at and disrespected a Republican as much as she did Rep. Al Green (D-TX) as he tried to discuss a Congressional Black Caucus “hands up, don’t shoot” protest over the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict a white police officer for killing unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Kelly challenged the candidates about sexism and abortion. And I was disgusted by Trump’s coarseattacks on her for doing it. But there were plenty of other important, timely subjects that Kelly (and her Fox colleagues) left out of their questions.

Kelly often touts herindependence and uses that to help burnish Fox’s “fair and balanced” cred, too. Undoubtedly, they’ll both be using her debate performance for plenty more of that.

When Trump answered the fat pig question with ‘only Rosie O’Donell’, she started laughing then quickly focused on the rest of her question, her respect for women not fitting the fox profile is as fake as the rest of her.
for any woman not

Well, you’re not going to host any show on clearly unbiased GOP TV unless you’re a dependable right-winger. It always, for example, amuses me the Fox News fanboys raging Geraldo is a liberal. Don’t confuse them explaining he’s a registered Republican who once pondered a GOP Senate run in New York. 😉

Anyhow, more on topic, Fox News moderators asking tough questions at the GOP debate shouldn’t be mistaken for fairness or balance. Media Matters floated the theory they behave better in front of a broader audience and any viewer of Fox News Sunday realizes the truth in that. While biased, Chris Wallace can’t behave like Hannity, O’Reilly, or Kelly who all love handling red meat.

That said, I think there’s a genuine attempt by Fox News to shake out the weak and undesirable candidates. So Trump (who establishment types like Ailes fret hurts the GOP) not only got the worst zingers, he seemed to be the target of more questions pitting other candidates against him. Which explains why The Donald got the most air time.

Meanwhile Fox News media creation and darling Huckabee got the best softballs which explains why many right-wingers are gushing he had the best night; Trump the worst.